International Hearing Voices Expert Making Special Appearance in Norwalk

April 6, 2015 - Dr. Eleanor Longden is an award-winning psychologist and researcher on voice hearing, trauma, and dissociation who hears voices—and now she says she wouldn’t live without them. Known as a pioneer in the international Hearing Voices movement, Longden’s TED Talk, “The Voices In my Head,” has been viewed nearly 3 million times. On a speaking tour from her home in the United Kingdom, Longden will give a free public presentation at Norwalk Community College, East Campus in the GenRE Forum, on Tuesday, April 14 from 1:00-3:00pm.

Eleanor Longden’s journey through mental illness began in 2000 as a college freshman when she started hearing voices in her head. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and checked into a psychiatric ward, Longden spent years trapped in a nightmare of hospitals and medications, pain and despair. With extensive therapy, she learned that the voices were a reaction to traumatic childhood events. She survived by finally accepting and listening to her internal narrators, not rejecting them.

Eventually, she came off medication, and returned to psychiatry … as a professional. To this day, she argues that psychiatry’s focus on “what’s wrong with you?” needs to become a more holistic “what happened to you?” Now Longden lives with her voices with peace, respect, compassion and acceptance.

Part personal memoir and part medical argument, Longden’s presentation, “Learning from the Voices in My Head,” calls for a more nuanced understanding of hearing voices and urges people to see mental illness not as a condition, but as a process through which people can emerge with their sanity intact.

Longden’s speaking tour is open to the public and includes engagements in Hartford and New Haven. Her visit is sponsored by the CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, which funds the state’s Hearing Voices Network of peer support groups.

Two Hearing Voices Support Groups meet weekly in Norwalk at the HSC Community Services Building, Tuesdays 1:00-2:30pm and Wednesdays 6:30-8:00pm. Contact NorwalkHVN@gmail.com for details.

Contact:

Call 1-855-810-5924 for more information.